Sunday, October 28, 2012

Juvenile Delinquency Theories

“Once
a criminal, always a criminal”, this is a famous saying that is common to the
American household and which most finds to be true. Once an individual
associates him or herself with criminal behavior they are labeled by their
community and expected to reoffend. Society now looks at these juveniles and
wonder why it is that these children are behaving in such matter.

It
has been clear by now what Juvenile Delinquency is and how it affects society.
A juvenile is a youth teen ranging from as young as 9 years old till the age of
18 who engage in illegal criminal behavior. Defining delinquency is not the
hard part, figuring out the reasons why adolescents commit crimes is. The study
of juvenile delinquency is important because it provides us with trustworthy
and reliable theories that can help with understanding the motives of
juveniles. These theories fall under three categories, biological, sociological
and psychological
Biological Theory considers delinquent behavior as predisposed and revolves
around the idea that children are born to be criminals. Cesear Lambrosso is
credited for creating the major biological theory called Positivism. His theory
states that individuals whom grow up committing crimes have inherited
biochemical and genetic factors. Lombroso also states that criminals tend to
have certain facial features that are considered a predisposition to commit crime
such as a flattened nose and supernumerary teeth. Another criminalist, Sheldon,
found that different body types made individuals behave differently. For
example, he believed that mesomorphs were more likely to commit crimes because
they were athletic, as opposed to the physic of an endomorph, a fat person
(Champion, 2004).

Trait theory relies on the idea that delinquents show biological and
physiological similarities to our primitive ancestors, the textbook The
Juvenile Delinquency written by Siegel and Welsh describe it as“savage
throwbacks of an earlier stage of human evolution. These views had a strong
impact on criminology in the 19th century but eventually these views evoked
criticism for their “sound methodology and lack of proper scientific controls”
(Siegel and Welsh, 2012), and by the middle of the twentieth century biological
theories fell out of favor as an explanation of delinquency.

Contemporary
biological theories include the Biosocial Theory which states that both
adolescent thought and behavior have biological and social bases (Siegel and
Welsh, 2012). This theory uses genetics and social environment to determine
whether or not a child will become delinquent. While childhood behavior has a
lot to do with a poor environment, disrupted socialization or inadequate
parenting the biosocial theory presents the fact that we must also take into
consideration their genes, because that is what ultimately makes everyone
unique and makes all individuals react to their environment differently. For example,
a kid with a pathological trait such as a disability, an abnormal personality,
brain damage or low IQ may be at high risk for committing crime. This risk is
then increased by environmental stressors such as failure in school, bad
parenting, substance abuse and delinquent peers.

There
are many major social factors that are believed to cause or affect delinquent
behavior such as social relations, community conditions, and level of violence,
poverty, and racial disparity. All of these factors play a huge role in the way
adolescents see their lives and help them turn to delinquent behavior. There
are numerous amounts of sociological theories that can describe different ways
a child can become delinquent. Here are some of the ones that are most important.

Social
Disorganization theory is when a community reduces the chances of advancement
for the children. For example, schools have high dropout rates, high levels of
graffiti, high poverty levels and so on. Residents in these areas experience
conflict and despair and as a result they turn to antisocial behavior. Strain
theory states that when an individual has goals or has wants that the economic
mainstream creates desirable and is unable to achieve the goals set before them
in a legitimate way, the individual will find alternative ways of achieving
his/her goals, usually turning to criminal behavior. Cultural Deviance theories
explain that due to the draining lifestyle of kids living in deteriorated
neighborhoods they turn to social isolation and delinquent behavior. These
behavior explained in cultural deviance create subcultures such as gangs and
cults in which these adolescents join to feel accepted, loved and a part of a
group. When a society is creating conflict for a youth to achieve success, these
teen experience status frustrations because they are not allowed to reach goals
set by the larger society. (Siegel and Welsh, 2012).

Psychological
theories help understand juvenile delinquency and “like religion, more than
like sociology or law, psychology is essentially concerned with the individual
himself and is addressed centrally to the processes within and around the
individual which give rise to specific forms of behavior” (McDavid and McCandles,
1962).

Two
major types of theories include Psychodynamic theory and Social Learning
theory. The Psychodynamic theory places it emphasis on the notion that one of
the main causes of juvenile delinquency is children’s abnormal personalities
that were created and developed in earlier life. Since then these “unconscious
mental processes” (Siegel and Welsh, 2012) have been controlling the
adolescents criminal behavior. The Id is the drive for immediate gratification
and can explain delinquency acts such as shoplifting or burglary. The ego is
the realization of real life and helps control the Id. Superego develops
through interactions with parents and other responsible adults and develops the
conscience of moral rules. This psychodynamic approach states that traumatic
experiences during early childhood can prevent the ego and superego from
developing properly, therefore leaving the Id with greater power (Champion,
2004).

Social
Learning theory is also a major theory that implies that criminal behavior is
learned through close relations with others, it asserts that children are born
good but learned to be bad. This theory states that all people have the
potential to become criminals because modern society presents many
opportunities for illegal activity but one has the choice to not engage. If a
child is raised in a clean community that has strong morals and if that child
has positive role models at home and in the community, he or she is more likely
to grow up achieving her goals. Opposing that scenario, when you have a child
growing up in a poor neighborhood where he or she is surrounded by gangs, drugs
and violence every day, it is very likely that this child will grow up
committing crimes. (McDavid and McCandless, 1962).

There is not one set answer on why our youth turn to
criminal behavior, but there are plenty of biological, sociological and
psychological theories that can help acquire reasoning’s and knowledge to
better understand our juveniles. Once these theories have been carefully
analyzed, applying them to our juveniles in a case by case scenario can help
deter and keep our children from choosing a life of criminal behavior.